ADAPTATIONS: Betty: A Glad Awakening was the basis for a television drama, The Betty Ford Story, shown on American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. (ABC) in March, 1987, starring Gena Rowlands.

SIDELIGHTS: Elizabeth Anne Bloomer Ford became known to the world as Betty Ford, the wife of Gerald Ford, the thirty-eighth president of the United States. During her tenure as first lady, she was known for speaking her own mind and strongly supporting women's rights. She went on to make her own legacy as the founder of a world-famous treatment center for drug and alcohol addiction, after courageously admitting her own dependence on alcohol and prescription drugs. Ford's autobiography, The Times of My Life, "reveals why she is one of America's most admired women," stated A. H. Cain in Library Journal.

Ford was born in Chicago but raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Her father died when she was seventeen years old, and she started to make her own way in the world as a model and dance instructor. When she was about twenty years old she met Martha Graham, the legendary pioneer of modern dance. Ford begged for a spot in one of Graham's troupes and was soon dancing for the choreographer's entourage. Discussing her association with Graham, Ford was quoted in Newsweek as saying, "[She] shaped my whole life. She gave me the ability to stand up to all the things I had to go through, with much more courage than I would have had without her."

In 1941, Ford left Graham's troupe and returned to Grand Rapids, at her mother's request. She continued to teach dance classes and worked as the fashion coordinator of a department store in that city. In 1942 she married, but in five years the union ended in divorce. Not long after she met Gerald Ford, a lawyer and congressman, who became her second husband. She found that a congressman's work demanded long hours; he worked through vacations, campaigned instead of celebrating their wedding anniversaries together, and when he became minority leader of the House of Representatives, Ford's husband spent 258 days per year away from home. The couple's children became the center of her world. Though she hardly realized it, she felt neglected and resentful. When a pinched nerve and spinal arthritis led her to start taking the medications that, along with alcohol, would alleviate her pain and her growing depression, Betty Ford began a long slide into addiction.

In 1973, Gerald Ford was appointed vice president of the United States to replace Spiro Agnew, who had resigned the position. Eight months later, when Richard Nixon resigned from the presidency, Betty Ford became the first lady, a job she did never expected or wanted to have. Yet, she adapted to the role of first lady well. Though the job entailed many responsibilities and pressures, she seemed to revel in them. With a well-deserved reputation for candor, Ford won "approval for her charm, honesty, and good humor," reported a writer for the Miami Herald. Considered the most outspoken first lady since Eleanor Roosevelt, Ford destroyed the prepared speech for her first official speaking engagement and was unafraid to speak out on a variety of sensitive subjects. For example, she told a McCall's interviewer that reporters had asked her about "everything but how often I sleep with my husband, and if they'd asked me that, I would have told them." When asked, she responded "as often as possible." In a now famous "60 Minutes" interview, a segment that generated the most mail in the television show's history, the First Lady discussed marijuana, equal rights for women, abortion, and the possibility of a premarital affair for her daughter, Susan. While some leading conservatives professed their shock over Ford's frank remarks, feminists and many other people across the country found Ford's candor refreshing.

Not long after becoming First Lady, Betty Ford discovered she had breast cancer. She underwent treatment, including a radical mastectomy and chemotherapy. Her willingness to be open with the public about her illness and treatment are credited with giving other women the courage to be screened for tumors and to seek treatment. Some years later, after leaving the White House, she again showed courage in the face of personal trauma when she entered a naval hospital for treatment of her addictions. Again, she was quick to use her own problems as a springboard to helping other people. Her first autobiography, The Times of My Life, was in press at the time she took steps to deal with her chemical dependency. A chapter about this important issue was quickly amended to the book.

Ford later wrote another volume, Betty: A Glad Awakening, that treated her history of addiction openly. "It's like taking another inventory," Ford explained to Andrea Chambers in People magazine. "The first book was on the outside—about people, places, and things. This book came very much from the inside. I thought I had examined my feelings before, but I really hadn't. I found I had carefully skipped over things." Betty chronicles Ford's dawning awareness of and eventual triumph over chemical addiction. It "is really a modest book about one woman's capacity for change: about the daily effort to live uncushioned by pills or liquor; about learning to connect with people once dismissed as pitiable or worse," wrote New York Times Book Review contributor Marian Sandmaier. Describing it as "a confession marked by candor and salinity," a Time reviewer noted, "There are no miracles here, but there is a collective refusal to succumb to the temptations of self-pity or despair."

In addition to telling her story, Ford took even more concrete steps to help others with addictions. In 1982, the Betty Ford Center was founded in Rancho Mirage, California, and began serving those with chemical addictions. Proceeds from Betty were donated to help fund the center, and Ford has, since its opening, taken a deep personal interest in the facility and its patients, often personally spending time with women who are anxious and despondent about being admitted. In 2003, she published Healing and Hope: Six Women from the Betty Ford Center Share Their Powerful Journeys of Addiction and Recovery, which weaves the stories of other women together with her own to give an idea of the many ways chemical dependency can manifest itself. Ford gives advice on conquering addiction and lends a "warm, authoritative overview" to the six other stories, according to Ray Olson in Booklist. He recommended Healing and Hope as "a solid popular introduction to the experience of recovery from addiction."

Newsweek, June 2, 1974; June 23, 1974; August 19, 1974; October 7, 1974; October 28, 1974; January 27, 1975; August 18, 1975; December 1, 1975; December 29, 1975; July 4, 1976; August 23, 1976; March 21, 1977; August 1, 1977; December 25, 1978; January 15, 1979; "Telling All: Memoirs of the Stars," p. 50.

New York Post, December 15, 1973; August 17, 1974.

New York Times, October 15, 1973; August 5, 1975; January 25, 1977; November 8, 1978; November 10, 1978; September 9, 1979, review of The Times of My Life, p. 49; February 25, 1987, Stephen Farber, "TV Taking a Frank Look at Betty Ford's Drama," p. 21.

New York Times Book Review, November 26, 1978, Jane Howard, review of The Times of My Life, p. 14; September 9, 1979, review of The Times of My Life, p. 49; March 1, 1987, Marian Sandmaier, review of Betty, p. 9.

Time, December 17, 1973; May 13, 1974; August 12, 1974; August 26, 1974; September 16, 1974; October 7, 1974; December 30, 1974; March 3, 1975; June 23, 1975; July 28, 1975; August 25, 1975; September 1, 1975; December 1, 1975; January 5, 1976; March 22, 1976; May 3, 1976; July 5, 1976; August 16, 1976; August 30, 1976; January 24, 1977; March 21, 1977; April 24, 1978, "Betty's Ordeal," p. 31; October 23, 1978, "The Unveiling of a New Ford (Betty Ford facelift)," p. 97; March 16, 1987, review of Betty.

Times (London, England), October 15, 1987.

U.S. News and World Report, August 19, 1974; October 7, 1974; December 30, 1974; August 25, 1975; December 15, 1975; December 29, 1975; March 8, 1976; October 18, 1976; June 20, 1977, "Six Former First Ladies: What Their Lives Are Like Now," p. 52; May 21, 1979, "Ex-first Ladies: How Much Protection?," p. 32; November 1, 1982, "What Ex-first Ladies Are Doing Now," p. 8; June 25, 1984, "Life after the White House: How First Families Adjust," p. 39; September 28, 1987, Muriel Dobbin, "Reflection on Life in a Fishbowl," p. 37; July 30, 2001, "Betty Ford, Political Savant," p. 5; August 20, 2001, Linda Kulman, Eric Tucker, "Betty Ford," p. 68.

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